MOVIE REVIEW

“PROMISED LAND”

by Doug Young

Frac (un)focus Promised Land
Starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand, Rosemarie DeWitt, Hal Holbrook;

directed by Gus Van Sant

Promised Land Frack Fluid(TM) is a newly released product that can be used to extract gaseous emissions regarding the national debate surrounding a process called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) to develop oil and natural gas from deep underground compacted strata. Like fracking fluid in the fossil fuel extraction process, Promised Land Frack FluidTMis composed of (mostly) water and other petroleum based compounds that helps penetrate the tightly layered, wound and compacted celluloid acetate and thereby releases a variety of opinions about films that depict the oil and gas industry’s efforts to develop fossil fuels from domestic sources.
And, like the industrial process where concerns have been expressed about fracking fluid’s toxic and mysterious components that may cause water contamination and its use in proximity to homes and schools, the use of Promised Land Frack Fluid(TM) can also elicit strong reactions and emanations from its use and exposure.
So, the question is: Is this product safe to use and view? Since it’s not possible to know until actually venturing into a darkened theater and hunkering down deep into a plush seat packed in between layers of other seats filled with patrons ready to release their own opinions and reactions, a place to turn for answers is a website called FracRefocus (a similar website available to learn about fracking fluids used in the fossil fuel process is called FracFocus, and can be found here: http://fracfocus.org/).
Drilling down in the FracRefocus website, one can search for individual filmic projects, and, when visited, one can click on the project and open a page that gives information about the components of Promised Land Frack Fluid(TM). Below is such a page concerning the film Promised Land, about two oil company executives’ efforts to secure oil and gas lease agreements from the members of a farming community in rural Pennsylvania. This is a sample page; other filmic projects may use different mixtures of Promised Land Frack Fluid(TM); as a result, no warranties are given or implied.
One final note: Just as some proprietary trade secret information is protected from disclosure in oil and gas fracking fluid, there are some similar needs for disclosure protection in the cinematic realm (a/k/a spoilers). So, in the disclosure form below, some information has been tagged as a trade secret. Sorry, although FracRefocus wishes it could divulge everything, it does
not want to create undue controversy.